'Why Canada Must End'. I got an interesting email today.

I stumbled upon your website the other day and thought you may be interested in my online book: http://www.whycanadamustend.com

Tony Kondaks

It occurs to me that I didn't clarify which website he found, this blog, or the Expansionist Party of the United States's domain-name website, or the less-comprehensive version on Tripod. The "Private Action for Canadian-U.S. Union" presentation, the most comprehensive of XP's "private action" pieces, appears only on the domain-name site. Three other pieces about Canada appear on both the domain-name and Tripod sites.
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I sent this reply:

DID I miss it, or is there no date on your online book? It certainly needs one, so people can see the historical context of your remarks and adjust to anything that has changed as being merely outdated rather than inaccurate.
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It seems to me that the greatest service to mankind that Canada can do is to merge into the United States and use its influence to make the U.S. truly a "kinder, gentler" country more truly dedicated to responsible freedom. I see that you reside in Arizona, so you know the forces of selfish Radical Libertarianism and Tea Party Republicanism which wants a society in permanent war between rich and poor, in which the rich grasp for ever more wealth they don't need, by seizing it from the poor and middle class. The admission of Canada, including Quebec, to the Union would surely end that war in triumph for generosity of spirit.
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Moreover, Quebec can prosper as a State of the Union, its francophone community's rights being secured by the longstanding Federal policy of protecting minorities (in a national sense). And Quebec's own linguistic minorities would be protected by the same Federal policies. After all, Hispanics are only 16% of the total U.S. population, but Spanish is on ballots in many parts of the Nation where they are not a significant part of the electorate.
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What no law can do, however, is keep people from voluntarily abandoning one language for another, as the bulk of Latinos in the U.S. are doing, yielding their parents' language for their friends' language,which is also the entire planet's most useful language.
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Americans are linguistically sensitive, and some are becoming concerned, as Quebeckers have long been concerned, that another language may impose itself on them. In our case, it is Mandarin, which fearmongers are warning us will displace English in international communication. That is of course an entirely absurd idea, given the preposterousness of Chinese in both phonological and orthographical terms.
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I have been to and thru Quebec on various occasions. My last venture was to Montreal in July 2009. It seemed a lot more French and less English than it had before. Indeed, atop Mount Royal, the English-language version of an explanatory plaque had been removed, presumably by vandals.

I think it was the equivalent of this nearby plaque (foto taken closer up, to be readable).

I can read French, esp. if I have a French-English dictionary at my disposal, but cannot really speak it. (And of course with idioms you can know the meaning of every single word but have no idea what the idiom put together is supposed to mean -- that's true of any language.) Had I not been with my "ex"-boyfriend (from about 1966), an Acadian who was able to deal with linguistic situations I could not, I would have been hard-pressed to deal with present-day Montreal. Even the road signs are unilingual, so if it weren't for numbers on highways, anglos (or is that term used only here in the U.S., vis-a-vis Hispanics, and "anglophones" used in Quebec?) unilingual Americans would have a hard time driving in Quebec.
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You speak, in your concluding chapter, I think (I have read, so far, only the Introduction and Conclusion) that real nations are held together by financial arrangements, and Canada of course was held together against absorption by the United States, by a separate legal system and historic tariffs and preferential east-west railroad rates, subsidies of wheat, etc., long enuf for a habit of mind to come into existence by nationalist education (brainwashing) that made a positive virtue out of an untidy arrangement that was in reality only a rearguard action by the British Empire to keep part of North America in The Empire against the 'grasping Yankee'.
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Canadians, however, are led to believe that some noble purpose is served by the existence of Canada apart from the U.S. that could not be served better from within the U.S. That is, alas, absurd. And thus the financial, cultural, and nationalist-satisfaction sacrifices that Canadians have made, have disserved them all, French and English alike. Who could believe that if Canada had voted in the U.S. Presidential election of 2000, George Bush would have won? Who could believe that President Gore would have attacked Iraq after 9/11 -- if 9/11 had even occurred? Canadian accession to the Union prior to the 2000 election could have saved over a million Iraqis from violent death produced by the U.S. invasion and ouster of the authoritarian regime of Saddam Hussein that prevented the kinds of violence the U.S. displacement of Saddam unleashed. Can anyone believe that if Canada were part of the Union today, the Tea Party would dominate national politics and make it nearly impossible for us to balance the national budget without ruining the poor and middle class? Think what Canadian (regional) votes in Congress would have been able to accomplish for universal healthcare. And on, and on.
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The Conclusion of your book does not say what you think would happen to TROC (an acronym for "the rest of Canada" that used to be in vogue, relative to separatist concerns; I don't know if it still is, since Quebec separatism is not much talked about now, as far as I know; I also don't know if TROC is pronounced as a word, or initials; do you?), in the event that Quebec did manage to get its act together and vote itself out of Canada. Do you think TROC would still see some point to remaining apart from the United States, either as a single federal union or as separate countries in various possible configurations of former provinces?
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I am very pressed nowadays with various projects, so don't know how much more of your online book I will be able to read. How long is it, in words? Pls advise.
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Do you have statistics about how many people have visited your site to read your book? I am going to mention it in my political blog today: http://antipost.blogspot.com. Thank you for writing, and pls let me know how long the entire book runs.

(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,474 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:06 AM

 
Plugging Away — but Not Here. I mentioned on July 9th that I have been fiting Radical Right crazies online thru Huffington Post/AOL comments areas. At that time, I had posted 3,222 comments in that effort. As of this morning, the figure was 5,749 comments, by far most in opposition to outrageous remarks by Radical Rightists.
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It is easy for you to view those comments, if you are interested in short (less than 250-word) observations on a wide variety of topics. Just go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/fanetiks?action=comments and you can see all 5,749 comments posted to date, and, on checking on later dates, into the future. That site is updated every time I add a comment. So if you want to see what I have addressed recently, you can check that site, if I haven't updated this site.
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In that HuffPo comments are limited to 250 words, I cannot always do justice to my ideas on HuffPo comments boards. But 250 words arrayed against the Radical Right is much better than a total failure or refusal to confront their sociopathy.
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There are, of course, important matters that we need to address at greater length, such as the repeated failure or actual refusal of Barack the Faithless to stand by the principles he was elected to assert. Again in the debt-ceiling "negotiations" — game of "chicken", really — Obama sold out to the Party of No. He just doesn't have the stomach/guts to fite the Radical Right to their complete defeat.
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Obama pretends that the behavior of the Republicans is partisan but not insurrectionary. He is wrong. It IS insurrectionary, fully as much as was the bombardment of Fort Sumter that started the Civil War. To fail to blast the Confederate behavior of the Tea Party Republicans is a dereliction of duty on the part of the Chief Executive of the United States of America.
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The Tea Party people are NOT misguided patriots. They are neo-Confederates out to destroy the United States, while using a pseudo-patriotic name that actually means nothing, in that the Boston Tea Party was a protest against "Taxation Without Representation", whereas every part of the United States DOES have representation in the decision-making process that decides national taxation. Why has the President, and the Democratic leadership, NOT hammered that point home again and again and again?
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Liberalism is not namby-pambyism. Liberalism is defense of the powerless against the powerful, and as such must be AT LEAST as powerful as the most rapacious rich and powerful people in the Nation — or it cannot protect the weak. If Liberals are not STRONGER than the rapists and killers of the poor, the poor will continue to be raped and killed. And make no mistake, "killed" is not extravagant abuse of language. Studies have shown that (at least) 45,000 Americans die each and every year because they don't have health coverage. And 2½ years after Obama took office, they STILL don't have healthcare coverage, so are STILL dying at the rate of (at least) 45,000 a year. How on Earth could anyone think that putting off universal health coverage until 2014 could possibly be just and reasonable when 45,000 Americans a year DIE from the lack of health insurance?
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It is very hard for Liberals to believe in the bona fides of Barack Obama when he continually caves in to the Radical Right and puts off needed reforms for YEARS, years in which tens of thousands of Americans DIE, and during which the Radical Right can rally its troops to oppose and, thru militant refusal to compromise, defeat every Democratic proposal they oppose.
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Barack the Faithless sells out Liberals, the people who put him into office. He sells out the helpless, the sick, the poor, the dying. He passes legislation that does not take effect for very long, even indeterminate periods. The repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has STILL not taken effect, many months after the law was passed. As far as anyone can tell, it will NEVER take effect, because Obama permits the military to push back and push back and push back the date of its effectiveness.
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Similarly, "Obamacare" was legislated to take effect in 2014, when Obama might not even be in office, as has given opponents of universal healthcare a very long time to rally their troops to repeal it! So how sincere is Barack Obama about anything?
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I call him "Barack the Faithless" because he seems always eager to sell out his supporters in preposterous and useless attempts to win over his enemies — people who would literally jump for joy on hearing he has been assassinated. In the vernacular of the black people Obama does NOT adequately champion, "Wassup wit at?"
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Note: Today's post is about 3 times as long as HuffPo allows.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,474 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:06 PM